Tarnished Rose
by TottWriter
Summary: Sat in the corner of the tavern, a gunslinger in a wide-brimmed hat and long leather jacket recounts stories of her past. Scarred both physically and mentally, she walks the fine line between right and wrong, with only the echoes of her lover and her hatred of the Nightmare Court to guide her... (Rated T just in case for implications and language further down the line)
1. Tarnished Rose

_Tarnished Rose_

They say I'm not much like my old self, these days. Well I'm damned if I care for what they think of me, now or then. When you've seen the things that I have...there's something wrong with you if you haven't changed.

It was the damned curiosity that did it for me, you know. Huh, I guess you could call it a stereotype, but I poked my nose in one too many places, and these days I consider myself lucky to still have the thing attached to my face. War and death changes you; makes you hard, makes you tough. And we need to be tough, because those battles aren't going away for a long time.

My first battle was on the Tarnished Coast. The undead were massing along the shore, and we fought them back. I'd seen fighting before, many times in fact, but this was my first time up close; my first time claiming lives. The cut and thrust of their onslaught was brutal, or so the others said, but I was more curious, you might say. These creatures were not alive, not sentient, and their borrowed bodies made interesting sounds as the combatants shot and hit and mauled them to a final oblivion.

It was the aftermath that was hard, really. Most of the remains were indeed undead, but people had fallen on the field as well, and there they lay, the life gone from them. Some had eyes closed, others eyes open, but all had a look of horror upon their faces, one which echoed in my mind for many weeks. But as I say, I was different then. Weaker, I suppose.

I get some strange looks now and then, too. Mostly from the people who shake their heads and tell me I've changed. Well, once you've changed there's no going back, so I don't see why they keep going on about it. And so what if I smoke, and drink, and take risks? There's nothing like that big hit when you pull off something big, something risky, and for a moment, you feel something good.

But those people don't see that. They just see me sat in the corner of whatever dive I've rolled up at, my boots all dusty and my trousers worn. They see the guns at my hips and the long leather coat at my back and well. I guess I just don't fit the picture someone put in their head of what a sylvari should look like. Because you know, they sure don't give the other hard folk sitting nearby the same kind of look as they give me.

And you know, sometimes I get tired of it all, of all the standards and expectations these people have of each other when out there they all die just the same. A bullet to the head and they'll drop, be they flesh or plant. Maybe you just have to see the bodies on the pyre a few more times, and look at the ashes left behind. Because when all's said and done, when we're gone, that's all that's left these days. Dust, not too different to the stuff on my heel.


	2. Recollections: Part the First

_Recollections. Part the first._

I was "home" again, as home as I ever get. Back at the grove, where at least the Mother Tree doesn't judge me, even if everyone else does. Passing through, from killing things south of the Grove to head out and kill things further north. Time for some new foes, some new battlefields. The churned up earth and the pyres just fascinated me then.

She was there, as I made my way along the path, sitting by a pool of water with her back to me. Pale, white-blue leaves, and delicate, so delicate. There was this, this feeling about her – it filled the air nearby, so calm and sweet and pure. I stopped walking. Heck, I couldn't help myself, I walked right up to her and asked her name.

"Ifanwy," she said, not even looking round. And then – and she still hadn't looked at me you know – she said: "You've come a long way to reach me." She looked round then, and her eyes... There was no judgement there, just something else, something I didn't understand then and still don't, not really. She never did tell me what she was thinking that day. I still wish I'd asked.

She took me as I was though. Never did judge me, not even though we were like night and day. Even her skin was soft - soft and smooth from her youth and her life, all of it spent under the branches of the Tree.

We used to sit and share our memories, talk about what we'd seen, and what we thought. Well, I guess I did most of the talking. I was six years old by that point, and she barely one. I'd seen battle, and other races and places, and she had spent her time tucked in the safety of the Grove, learning and helping those who came and went. But she was never as sweet with the others as she was with me. She never gave them that look in her eyes, or held them close, not moving, not speaking, just standing there, arms wrapped round me, head on my shoulder.

I used to watch her as she patched them up, those travellers who came home sick or injured. Once or twice it was me getting the poultices and bandages, but even though she never understood why I went out there, put myself in harms way, she never asked me to stop, never asked me what I was doing.

She was my hope for the world, there waiting for me back home after the blood and the death and the fires. But I was a damned fool. Oh, I told her what I did, how I mowed down the undead with bullets and blade, how it was kill or be killed, how it was dangerous. But she...She never understood all that. She never got hardened to it like I had, never got used to the constant watch you put up for a threat, the way your senses sharpen to danger until you can smell it on the air.

She just followed me one day, and like the fool I am I didn't make her go back. Of course they got her. They were hot on her trail the moment she left the shade of the Pale Tree. Someone as sweet and bright as her, how could they damn well resist? I should have made her turn round, walk right back into that Grove, and damn the argument. But, I could never be hard around her. She brought out that last little softness, the light and the joy, and I loved her for it.

They knocked me on the head first. Took my guns, took my knife, tied me good and fast. It was half over by the time I woke, anyway. She would never have been the same. But they weren't done. They're not like anything else. Not like battle. In battle, you go to kill. You kill one, then then next; you're a machine, killing without thought until there's only one side left. You don't play around with death, drawing it out, making them scream, making them weep. Ain't how a person ought to be.

I snapped. Nothing was going to hold me down, not even the ropes around my wrists. Not even the pain as my hands were scraped and battered by pulling them from the knots, and from loosening the bonds around my legs to move.

He never saw me coming, never saw until I grabbed my gun and cocked the trigger. Turned round just in time to see who did for him. Just like I got there in time to hold her as she died. I think she smiled there, right at the end. But she didn't speak. She never got a chance to say those last words people talk about. Just died in my arms as I reached her, before I even managed to say goodbye.


End file.
